Stefanie Bennett- Three poems

RELIC... MAY 6th 2002           

 

... Picking up shells on Long Island I’m

Remembering a displaced people

 

As the thin sea’s edge draws the firmament

In streaks of pale violet.

 

Trade goods would have been exchanged here

... Copper kettles for wild game,

 

Squash, and field-fruits awaiting

The scorched Metacom’s advance.

 

I dig my heels into quick-silver sand

Wet with the tide’s ebb

 

And reel at a faint earth pulse. All

Around are

 

Distinctive indentations.

Moccasin shaped –.

 

{Metacom = King Phillip}

 

 

 

RUMI & the new white-flag physics   

 

‘You can’t take the Kublai

Out of the Khan’

He said –,

Slamming the notebook

Shut.

 

A sigh righted itself from

The doppler effect

To slide

Into the underlined

                              Sonic

Boom of the times:

 

- Yes! And a tsunami of flybuy

Eyelashes

Retextured

The backwoods’

Torso

 

Of wild manna where

Ontology

Had fancifully

Ditched

 

The fallen...

 

 

 

STANDARDIZATION      

 

Dexterity was put on hold

As the bombs dropped.

Submissively, the woman

Tossed coarse salt

Over ‘both’ shoulders,

Steadied the cut-glass pitcher,

And folded curd

In a spotted napkin.

 

When the panting corridor of air

Spiralled

It slapped

The courtyard child,

Her child,

Oblivion bound...

Omitted is the sound

Of love’s collision.

 

 

 

Stefanie Bennett has published eighteen books of poetry and one novel. She has acted as a

publishing editor and worked with Art’s Action for Peace. Of mixed ancestry [Italian/Irish/Paugussett-Shawnee], she was born in Queensland, Australia, in 1945. Her latest poetry title ‘The Vanishing’ is due at year’s end. Publisher; Walleah Press.